Tag: Fiction

Book Synopsis: Socially awkward teen Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two charismatic students become his mentors. Free-spirited Sam and her stepbrother Patrick help Charlie discover the joys of friendship, first love, music and more, while a teacher sparks Charlie’s dreams of becoming a writer. However, as his new friends prepare to leave for college, Charlie’s inner sadness threatens to shatter his newfound confidence.

Movie Adaptation: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

You don’t want to miss this one!

An upbeat epistolary, with the writing perfectly synchronized with the introvert (or more appropriately: emotionally handicapped) protagonist, not finding it relatable is not even a question since we all have been through/are going through the gawky adolescence.

And if you abstain from shedding spotlight on yourself and are comfortable being the observer, you would perfectly understand the “Wallflower”

You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.

Here’s a sneak:

There is a feeling that I had Friday night after the homecoming game that I don’t know if I will ever be able to describe except to say that it is warm. Sam and Patrick drove me to the party that night, and I sat in the middle of Sam’s pickup truck. Sam loves her pickup truck because I think it reminds her of her dad. The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word “baby” in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy, and we all got quiet.

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.

“I feel infinite.”

Chbosky covers the A-Z of being a teenager- First dates, family, drama, new friends, sex, sexual exploration, drugs, loss, young love, suicide, sexual abuse, rape, and you name it!

It’s devastatingly real but somehow I feel Chbosky bit more that he could chew. The depths of each aspect haven’t really been described or hinted upon, save for the child-like outlook of the teenage protagonist. The novel is incredibly over-rated, yes! It didn’t really inspire or inculcate something in me as I expected it to (Probably because I had high hopes when I picked this book up!).

Anyways, I think everyone should read this book, not because everyone else is reading it or has read it; but because it’s a nostalgic experience. And don’t we all like to live more than many lives (Even though it spans only 256 pages)?

Book synopsis: A woman confronts traumatic, childhood memories of the murder of her mother and two sisters when she investigates the possibility that her brother is innocent of the crime.

Movie Adaptation: Dark Places (2015)

Gone Girl led me here, lead me to read this one! And let me tell you, this one doesn’t disappoint! Flynn spins off this piece with quite ease, thanks to her spot-on narrative style, which she has aced!

This book mostly covers what happened after the big event, but it occasionally keeps swivelling back to the events before the big one.

It is really nicely written! I really appreciate the way Flynn has arranged the specks of events, far apart but not so much to seem far fetched or disorderly! You might think you were there all the way or almost there only to be proved wrong!

Wrong people, wrong perspectives, spurious events and the tedious that is the life and task of a survivor, and the exhaustive investigation, plus the survivor’s quest for the truth, for the unclouded version of the truth, is artfully revealed.

Here’s an excerpt:

Libby Day

Now

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It’s the Day blood. Something’s wrong with it. I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders. Little Orphan Libby grew up sullen and boneless, shuffled around a group of lesser relatives—second cousins and great-aunts and friends of friends—stuck in a series of mobile homes or rotting ranch houses all across Kansas. Me going to school in my dead sisters’ hand-me-downs: Shirts with mustardy armpits. Pants with baggy bottoms, comically loose, held on with a raggedy belt cinched to the farthest hole. In class photos my hair was always crooked—barrettes hanging loosely from strands, as if they were airborne objects caught in the tangles—and I always had bulging pockets under my eyes, drunk-landlady eyes. Maybe a grudging curve of the lips where a smile should be. Maybe.

The novel along with its complex storyline is dark, almost disturbing (Massacre, Satanic cults). Make sure you have something happy to do while reading this or else the darkness will sweep you over. Incredibly demented , it’ll keep you scared, yet riveted to keep going!

You just sort of hang onto the book, hang on to it all the way, step by step until absolute finality finds you.

Finally, Flynn indeed accomplishes her mission to keep you guessing! Maybe that is infact the motto she lives by!

Do not read this if you like happy novels. This book may probably be the literature version of Black Metal music.

Book Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Lesley is a typical teenage girl: her worries revolve around boys, choosing the right college and bickering with her younger sister Megan. She adores her beautiful, captivating mother Mara, who tells evocative stories of her childhood in Hungary and Germany before the war. However, Mara has one memory of the past that she can never share…

As Lesley begins to uncover the horror of her mother’s secret, their idyllic family life shatters around them, and Lesley realizes that her mother is not the person she thought she knew.

Don’t let the synopsis deceive you because it’s not entirely a Coming-Of-Age novel!

Hayden, a usually non-fiction writer has gloriously attempted writing fiction stories into 3 novels, this being one of them, and it is absolutely lovely!

Based on a true story (Hayden has let on that she found inspiration to write this one after coming across an newspaper article on the case of a local woman who had been a part of a Holocaust ), it’s heart-breaking!

The story, well combined with bursts of comedy, tragedy and your daily dose of teenage problems, all to form a devastatingly disturbing novel, especially when you’re halfway through it. It’s sad,really!

The mother-daughter tie has been well captured, ever so smoothly, and every so normally, devoid of melodrama save for the mother’s bouts of eccentricity and eventually mania. It’s painful seeing a daughter hold on to those sane parts of her mother, of her to pretend that everything’s just fine, her mother will come back to her, like she always does!

Here’s how it starts:

In that year what I wanted the most was a boyfriend. I was seventeen and had never had a date. I had the rest:breasts, hair under my arms, my period, the desire. I certainly had the desire.

Once, when I was little and not too informed about the mechanics, my best friend and I had pretended to make love, our legs spread apart scissor-fashion, until we were crotch to crotch, one person’s sneaker under the other person’s nose.My grandmother had caught us at it. She sent Cecily home and spanked me with a wooden mixing spoon and made me sit in the pantry to say Hail Mary. There was no doubt in her mind, she said: i got such interests from my mother. Perhaps I did. However, even at that tender age, I decided they weren’t such bad interests to have.

The writing has already grabbed your interest, hasn’t it? Don’t lie.

Again, it’s not entirely a Coming-Of-Age Novel!

Anyways, I found the book a bit of a difficult read; I mean, its not brain-whacking or anything, I just found it tough to read atleast as I was approaching midway, but then the journey found it’s pace.

I somehow like how Hayden ended the novel (most readers might beg to differ!) because somethings in life need not have a proper stated justification, a reason, a plausible cause for why it happened, or a happy/hopeful conclusion … some things are just inevitable.

Book Synopsis: When Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon discovers the resurgence of an ancient brotherhood known as the Illuminati, he flies to Rome to warn the Vatican, the Illuminati’s most hated enemy. Joining forces with beautiful Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Langdon follows a centuries-old trail of ancient symbols in the hope of preventing the Illuminati’s deadly plot against the Roman Catholic Church from coming to fruition.

Movie Adaptation: Angels and Demons (2009)

You may call it a sequel or a prequel to Brown’s other works; I’d just like to think of it as one of the series of hefty cases in Robert Langdon’s life,thanks to Dan Brown!

I may be completely wrong when I say this one is not one of Dan Brown’s finest works, nevertheless it doesn’t fail to make you inquisitive! Based on a highly misunderstood secret society, this novel uncovers the depths and takes us back in history to the times of Galileo and Newton, to the atrocity Religion imposed on Science during those times. (Also see The Da Vinci Code)

Although not a religious book, it has religious elements and covers both Rome and Vatican city. Terror attacks and hostage situations turn the novel pretty graphic: Brown holds nothing back!

Here’s a peek:

PROLOGUE

Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own. He stared up in terror at the dark figure looming over him. “What do you want!”

“La chiave,” the raspy voice replied. “The password.”

“But…I don’t… ”

The intruder pressed down again, grinding the white hot object deeper into Vetra’s chest. There was the hiss of broiling flesh.

Vetra cried out in agony. “There is no password!” He felt himself drifting toward unconsciousness.

The figure glared. “Ne avevo paura. I was afraid of that.”

Vetra fought to keep his senses, but the darkness was closing in. His only solace was in knowing his attacker would never obtain what he had come for. A moment later, however, the figure produced a blade and brought it to Vetra’s face. The blade hovered. Carefully. Surgically.

“For the love of God!” Vetra screamed. But it was too late.

The novel is exhausting, really talky and unnecessarily long. There were times halfway through the book where i couldn’t find the motivation to continue reading; but i managed to finish it as it somehow managed to pick up the long-due pace. It starts of spectacularly, looses pace, gains pace and looses it again.

There have been substantial amounts of discrepancies and inaccuracies in the facts stated in this novel, so make sure you verify before you believe although there are updated versions of the novel published correcting the same.

Book Synopsis: Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism.

Movie Adaptation: (In Development)

Hosseini’s panache for story-telling never fails to touch souls and he has done it again with this second debut novel! A story set in the initial three decades of the war-ridden Afghanistan, with powerful characters whose voice resonates deep within the reader; a masterpiece has been created yet again!

Hosseini weaves up this heartbreaking story about friendship in times of despair. Friendship has always been the main theme of Hosseini’s books (See The Kite Runner).

It will restore your faith in humanity, it’ll make you see the human in humanity; tell you that even in this cruel, cruel world, there are a handful of genuinely good people out there. It will open your eyes to the effect of war, that war is nothing but mindless and selfish; whose triumph may be pompous but results in killing of thousands of innocents, orphans sons and daughters, widows husbands and wives and displaces homes.

There were moments where I had to literally put the book down for a moment and stare blankly at the wall and let the event sink in!

Here’s how it starts:

Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.

It happened on a Thursday. It must have, because Mariam remembered that she had been restless and preoccupied that day, the way she was only on Thursdays, the day when Jalil visited her at the kolba. To pass the time until the moment that she would see him at last, crossing the knee-high grass in the clearing and waving, Mariam had climbed a chair and taken down her mother’s Chinese tea set. The tea set was the sole relic that Mariam’s mother, Nana, had of her own mother, who had died when Nana was two. Nana cherished each blue-and-white porcelain piece, the graceful curve of the pot’s spout, the hand-painted finches and chrysanthemums, the dragon on the sugar bowl, meant to ward off evil.

It’ll make you re-realize the power of time, that everything is momentary, dynamic. One moment it’s right in front of your eyes, the next moment… poof!

The story is full of suspense; the next chapter would be based on a completely different scenario, on completely different emotions involving the same characters!

If you look back after finishing this book, scan through the book, you will realize the long way each character has come, the long way you have gone through to be the person you are at that specific moment!

Finally, if I haven’t made it clear earlier, I REQUEST you to give it this one a read!

Stephen ‘word-weaver’ King!! This man has a flair so good with writing that can turn the most mediocre story plots into a nail-biting read!

No, I’m not saying that Mr. Mercedes has a weak plot but being an avid reader of murder mysteries, I’ve read plots way better than the one King presents us here. But writer of such a caliber converts this book into a thorough page-turner with his usual ease.

Like in all of King’s books, the characterization is top notch. The “Det. Ret.” is so convincing as a cold, competent but borderline suicidal Detective who’s baited by an even colder, inhumane mass murderer “Mr. Mercedes”. Even the Detective’s sidekicks are so well described, you’d be sure you practically know them!

Mr. Mercedes, undoubtedly, is one of the best villains to be ever written. You appreciate him one instant and our grossed out the next.

Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.

Though it’s not among King’s best books, the thrill and the suspense and the cat-and-mouse chase of the right and the wrong, make it a worthwhile read.

Book Synopis: I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.

If you thought it’s impossible to make a funny book about mental illness, I’d shove this book at you! Filer has managed to write this dark comedy about an illness, a disease with the shape and sound of a snake: Schizophrenia.

It is a compelling narrative of a lad shadowed by a mental illness and the lingering grief and guilt over his brother’s death.

Although the main event of the story is signposted at the very start, the suspense lingers. Flier succeeds to give some and hold some back!

The writing is incredibly inconsistent and dynamic which makes it beautiful! The central character actually physically writes this book so it’s like an episodic diary, with tremendous amounts of gaps. His life continues to move forwards as he writes about it. He gets distracted sometimes, dawdles off topic, finds his words back, rewinds, gives real-time updates, flashbacks and rewinds again. Since Matt is physically writing it, it is not ordered, it has flaws, it has sloppy handwriting and sloppy thoughts and typewriter pages with their smudged ink, and tiny sketches and doodles.

Here’s how it starts:

the girl and her doll

I should say that I am not a nice person. Sometimes I try to be, but often I’m not. So when it was my turn to cover my eyes and count to a hundred- I cheated.

Through this bittersweet novel whose lead, although unreliable, captivates you even though his world is falling apart, Flier give an insight to the illness through this book, and helps the reader if not understand, but feel what the illness is like partially at least!

Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe – from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos – the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

This book had a deep, and I meant it when I say, deep deep impact in my life. I would be barking half truth if I didn’t say this book made me a better person!
Khaled obviates from his normal narrative style and adopts one in the form of a string of short stories and letters, written in the perspective of it’s different characters, which makes it more personal, more down-to -earth and more closer to the heart! This combined with Khaled’s writing makes a really touching journey. Khaled’s flair for his homely writing is ever so clear here, as was it in The Kite Runner.

Here’s how it goes:

FALL 1952

So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one. Don’t either of you ask me for more. It’s late, and we have a long day of travel ahead of us, Pari, you and I. You will need your sleep tonight. And you too, Abdullah. I am counting on you, boy, while your sister and I are away. So is your mother. Now. One story, then. Listen, both of you, listen well. And don’t interrupt.

At the end of reading this book you will re-realise that nothing, nothing supersedes family.

Emotionally breath-taking, it hits you right in the feels, repeatedly! Nostalgia has never been more nostalgic!

Khaled dextrously glides over countries, and even generations to give you this heart-wrenching masterpiece! It’ll make you feel homesick even though (if!) you’re at home! A powerful story which extends to the variety that makes up a family, that glue a family ; starting from your mum and dad right up to the caretaker!

It took me a while to pick the pieces back up and get over this book! Also, this book is probably the reason I require glasses now!

Book Synopsis: They watched Danilo Silva for days before they finally grabbed him. He was living alone, a quiet life on a shady street in Brazil; a simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it very well.But Danilo had a past with many chapters. Four years earlier he had been Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a prominent Biloxi law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Then one cold winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car and died a horrible death. When he was buried his casket held nothing more than his ashes.From a short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial. Then he fled. Six weeks later, a fortune was stolen from his ex-law firm’s offshore account. And Patrick fled some more.But they found him.

Movie Adaptation: (Development ongoing)

This one may not be Grisham’s finest work but it is worth the read! A cleverly plotted story seen from different perspectives, it incorporates violence, drama, sardonic humor to make one edgy thriller.With every turning page the plot perfectly fits; It’s all relative!

Grisham’s sense of social satire and wittiness is perhaps unsurmountable! Such clever manifestation of legal proceedings, court trials and perspectives of prosecution into a novel should be a crime! The need for freedom emphasized by the elusory protagonist is elaborately explained, moreover, even justified!

This book is vile, but satisfying; shrewd, but exceedingly clever ; adorned with court related humor, but is impartial. Grisham leaves it to you to judge what is right and what is easy!

Here’s an excerpt:

December 7, 2008

They found him in Ponta PorÒ, a pleasant little town in Brazil, on the border of Paraguay, in a land still known as the Frontier.They found him living in a shaded brick house on Rua Tiradentes, a wide avenue with trees down the center and barefoot boys dribbling soccer balls along the hot pavement.They found him alone, as best they could tell, though a maid came and went at odd hours during the eight days they hid and watched.

The writing has no special elements but is fairly plain, thus does justice to the exhaustive story! You’d be disappointed if you expect murder/killing from the start, since neither of that happens, atleast not during the story timeline the writing is based on.

I found the ending a bit upsetting but that’s no biggie!

What more can I say? Well, for more details, all you gotta do is READ IT and decide for yourself! 😉

Book Synopsis: High schooler Greg, who spends most of his time making parodies of classic movies with his co-worker Earl, finds his outlook forever altered after befriending a classmate who has just been diagnosed with cancer.

Page Count: 295.

Movie Adaptation: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015).

Step aside clichés where suffering from a chronic disease magically expands the scope of your love life.

Looking for something uncannily weird? Well, this one boasts of it, and well, yes it is the worldy weird! (Obviously the title itself is suggestive of its weirdness).

I personally didn’t like this book as much as I expected it to, but it is worth a shot because of it’s writing, which is not really “writing”, but just scrambled thoughts re-arranged legibly(Read: Jesse Andrews is a screen-writer).

Randomness was never better! You might relate with the protagonist or you might find Earl bemusing. I discovered the latter.

Here’s how it all begins:

So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks. Do you accept that premise? Of course you do. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad?

The novel is surpringly bone-tickling! Andrews has successfully managed to incorporate humor into a plot so heart-breaking!
My advice for a whacky novel like this? Be a weirdo,give it a shot (you might learn a weird thing or two,or not!), and then you can tell your weird folks about how you read a weird book about being weird.
It’s a perfect read for high school and college kids!

Go for it if you’re looking for a simple, casual read. Watch the movie for a synergistic effect.